The opening keynote speaker at the Towards Carfree Cities conference is Mia Birk, from a bike/ped planning firm here in Portland called Alta Design. Check out the short episode of “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” above, featuring Mia talking about the pedestrian & bicycle planning movement in Portland — she’s very eloquent and the… Continue reading
Author: Nick Grossman
Real Estate Tours by Bike
Live blogging from the Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland, OR… Next to our table, we found a real estate broker from Portland who gives bike tours of houses for sale. What a great way to see neighborhoods and get a taste of what it might be like to live in a place! Continue reading
LSN at the Carfree Cities Conference
This week, a handful of us from the Livable Streets team at TOPP are out in Portland, OR visiting the 8th International Towards Carfree Cities conference. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be giving a presentation entitled “Street Fight! Lessons from the NYC Livable Streets Movement.” So far, we’ve had a great time here in Portland — we picked… Continue reading
Coming soon… The Livable Streets Network
For the past several months, my coworkers and I over at The Open Planning Project have been hard at work on an important redesign and new product launch. I’m now excited to say that the final launch is, ahem, days away. Streetsblog and StreetFilms have been hugely popular since they launched two years ago, making… Continue reading
Taking it to the streets
(ok, I obviously need to work on less cheesy headlines, but for the moment…) On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of accompanying TOPP’s latest hire, Kim Wiley-Schwartz, on a pilot session for her new Livable Streets curriculum. She’s developing an education program around Livable Streets that’s debuting in several NYC public schools this spring. This… Continue reading
Wanted: Awesome web designer
Here at The Open Planning Project, we are currently looking to add to our talented design team. If you’re a web designer with visual design talent, rock-solid production skills, and a strong intuition for user experience, we want to hear from you. Download the full job description. Life is good at TOPP — we work… Continue reading
Changing behavior, one bag at a time
Yesterday, American Airlines announced that it’s going to start charging a fee for checked baggage. Of course, this will draw the ire of frequent and not-so-frequent flyers everywhere. But, perhaps it makes some sense. What’s making flying expensive right now is the cost of fuel. So, if people pack less, planes will be lighter and… Continue reading
Streetfilms: Diverter
Elizabeth Press over at Streetfilms has been producing awesome stop-motion animations recently. The latest: Diverter. This short video shows how diverters can be used to redirect traffic flow and make intersections more friendly for pedestrians and cyclists. This is a great follow-up to Clarence Eckerson’s epic Berkeley Bike Boulevards video, showing some of these ideas… Continue reading
Taking the train to work
Last Tuesday, Aaron Naparstek and I took in the Yankee game and watched the impressive Cliff Lee throw a 7-inning shut out and drop his ERA to 0.81, in what some analysts were calling “the pitching matchup of the season” (5-0 Lee vs. 6-0 Wang). It turns out, had we been a little earlier, we… Continue reading
Digifesto
One of my colleagues at The Open Planning Project, Sebastian Benthall, has started blogging over at Digifesto. Seb is one sharp cookie, so keep an eye on this blog for lots of great web gems — the blog will be focusing on “how the internet and open source software can be used by civil society… Continue reading
MX Conference
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the MX Conference in San Francisco. MX stands for Managing Experience, and is targeted at people like me: managers of creative teams attempting to produce great user experiences. The conference is put on by the folks at Adaptive Path, who have a fair amount of experience managing… Continue reading
Welcome to the Undesign
Over the past two years, I’ve redesigned this website about 5 times, but never finished. Talk about frustrating. Eventually, I realized that I was getting nowhere, and that instead of a redesign, what I really needed was an undesign. So that’s what I did. Welcome to wrkng -1.0, my first undesign. Lately I’ve been getting… Continue reading
Carbon Tax Center Redesign
Today, we launched a redesign of the Carbon Tax Center website. The primary goal was to create a more impactful homepage that communicates CTC’s mission quickly and clearly. In doing so, we also reworked the site header (to remove distracting and unncessary graphics), and crispened up the typography. CTC has been getting a lot of… Continue reading
The Professional Basketball Players at Make Music NY
The Professional Basketball Players were happy to be part of Make Music New York yesterday, the first incarnation of this international music festival here in NYC. We had a great time playing at the Liz Christy Community Garden on the Lower East Side — thanks to everyone there for having us, and to everyone who… Continue reading
Streetfilms Launched
I’m proud to announce the launch of StreetFilms, the new home of Clarence Eckerson’s short films about Livable Streets, and another site in the New York City Streets Renaissance family.Back when I was in college, riding the CalTrain to San Jose for work, I thought that one day I might make Public Service Announcements lauding… Continue reading
Supporting Women Artists Project
Supporting Women Artists Project (SWAP) is a new non-profit organization that offers free studio space for women artists in exchange for mentoring young girls who are interested in art. They are just gearing up for their first year, and are now accepting donations online. Way to go Frannie and Andrea! Continue reading
Streetsblog Launched
I am happy to announce the launch of another great NYC website: StreetsBlog. A project of the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign and edited by NYC transportation/planning blogger Aaron Naparstek, this site will take a critical look at transportation issues in our area. I’ve been a fan of Aaron’s writing for some time, so it was… Continue reading
GRDN featured at CubeCart.com
GRDN has been getting a lot of attention lately – thanks to everyone for sending in your comments. Most notably, it has been chosen as a featured case study at CubeCart.com (one of two, randomly highlighted on the homepage). Cube Cart is the e-commerce package we used, chosen mainly because it’s the only php-based e-commerce… Continue reading
It’s My Park Day
This Saturday at 4pm in Carroll Park, Frannie will be unveiling her brand new splatter-painted garbage can! Continue reading
Museum Mile Festival
If you haven’t heard about it, the Museum Mile Festival is coming up again this June 13th. Every June, 23 blocks of 5th Avenue (between 82nd & 105th Streets) are closed for a giant block party – pretty awesome. All the museums along the mile open to the public, and there are all sorts of… Continue reading